I. Field of the Invention
The invention is directed to an automated method of selecting personnel matched to particular job requirements, and, more particularly, to a method of selecting qualified job candidates for positions defined by specific selection criteria based upon encoded job classification titles, industrial experience and special qualifications.
II. Discussion of the Prior Art
For many years, employment agencies (sometimes called search firms) have been attempting to match job candidates to specific job criteria as required by employers. Most employment agencies receive payment only for those positions which they fill with qualified employee candidates. Therefore, in a highly competitive environment, speed in identifying and presenting candidates and presenting to potential employers is very important. It is also extremely important to be able to handle a large number of potential candidates in various fields in order to be in the best position to fill employers' job requirements as they open.
The most commonly known method of matching personnel to job specification criteria requires a person trained in job placement skills to manually review documents such as resumes and other qualifications related documents while comparing such documents to criteria specified by the potential employer. Such a manual system has several drawbacks. It is obviously very slow in most cases since there is no fast way to sort unqualified candidates from qualified candidates on a large-scale basis. Further, it is believed that an agency using such a system can effectively handle only up to 60 active personnel files per search consultant. This is because much of the information about the candidates must be remembered by the search consultants themselves. Use of such a system makes it difficult to identify and present a list of qualified candidates together with resumes and other needed information to the requestor in less than a matter of several hours.
Some automated systems for selecting personnel based on job criteria do exist. It is believed that such systems are almost exclusively based upon the use of key word searching. That is, qualifications of various personnel are stored in a computer database as, for example, in the form of resumes. The searcher then types in certain key words which relate to the job qualification criteria hoping to match the key words with the job criteria. Such systems are limited by the fact that the use of key Words is very imprecise. This is due to the fact that job titles and, in particular, technological slang terms or "buzz" words have meanings which vary quite extensively from employer to employer and from one region to another. Further, such systems are not "user friendly" because they require significant training and experience with the system before it can be used effectively. Such systems are further limited by misspellings which can commonly occur in large databases and which may cause candidates to be missed by a key word approach. Such systems also require a complete line-by-line search of every file in the system to avoid missing potential candidates.